Murray and Lower Darling valleys environmental water

Following an environmental water release, an ephemeral creek on the lower Murray River near Wentworth, NSW, fills in 2010 for the first time in almost a decade. Photo: Sascha Healy, OEH.

The Murray River forms a 1700-kilometre border between NSW and Victoria and continues downstream into South Australia. The Murray Valley includes a large anabranch system - the Edward-Wakool system - which creates an intricate network of streams, creeks and wetlands.

The NSW portion of the Murray and Lower Darling valleys has an area of 98,300 square kilometres which contains a mosaic of wetland types, ranging from ephemeral wetlands to permanently wet lagoons and rivers.

View a map showing the location of environmental watering areas in the Murray and Lower Darling valleys (Murray2013.pdf, 830KB).

The Murray Valley wetlands and rivers have important Aboriginal cultural heritage values, with more than 968 cultural heritage sites recorded. Sites have been recorded in the Millewa Forest (Cummeragunja people), Werai Forest (Deniliquin people) and the eastern portion of Koondrook Forest (Cummeragunja and Moama people) and include scar trees, burials, shell middens and oven mounds.

The Living Murray icon sites

The Living Murray icon sites within NSW include the Millewa Forest, Koondrook-Perricoota Forest, the eastern section of Chowilla Floodplain and the River Murray Channel.

Watering of these sites is coordinated by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and undertaken in conjunction with the relevant states.

Benefits of environmental water

Environmental water in the Murray and Lower Darling valleys supports:

wetland vegetation communities, including one of Australia’s largest stands of river red gum forest, as well as river cooba, black box and lignum, common reed, moira grass, spike rush and giant rush